Evan Hunter - Sons

“All right,” he said, “climb out of this traffic and level off at 1500 feet, we’ll be flying southeast to Taylor Field. You’re still not looking around enough, Tyler. Close your goddamn canopy. And stop feeling so fucking proud of yourself,” he added, even though he could not see my grin from the rear cockpit.

We walked around the field on Christmas Day, my father and I.

We did not talk much at first. A noisy wet wind was blowing in fiercely off the highway, discouraging conversation. We walked briskly, our strides almost identical, somewhat duckfooted, frankly unattractive. I was an inch shorter than my father, with the same angular build, the same blue eyes and high cheekbones, the same nose my mother used to call “the beak of Caesar, the Roman greaser,” the same thin-lipped mouth. To the single hardy cadet who approached us from the north, we must have looked like differently dressed twins skirting the edge of the parade grounds there, my father with one gloved hand clutching his Homburg to his head, the other in the pocket of his black coat; I with my garrison cap tilted jauntily, the collar of my short overcoat pulled up high around my ears like a raunchy ace.

When my father began talking, his first words were carried away by the wind. I turned toward him and squinted into his face, straining to hear him, because I thought at first he might be saying something important. But he only wanted to know how my training was going, whether or not they were really teaching me to fly because what would matter most when I got over there was how well I knew my job. I told him that my instructor in Primary had taught me all sorts of combat tricks, and then I explained how much I was enjoying Basic, where I was flying the 450-horsepower trainer, and how I was looking forward to Advanced, where I hoped to start flying two-engine planes in preparation for the P-38, assuming of course that the Army didn’t have other plans for me — like perhaps training me for a single-engine fighter plane or, fate worse than death, one of the big four-engine bombers. Ferrying a bomber over Germany, I told my father, wasn’t exactly my idea of fun.

My father said that none of it was fun, and the sooner I learned that, the better off I’d be. Oh yes, he said, he knew how anxious I was to get over there, a young man likes to be where the action is, likes to feel he’s helping to make history. He could understand my frame of mind, he said, because he’d felt exactly the same way back in 1918 when he’d hurried off to join the Army and do his share in winning the Great War. Of course, he said, we don’t call it that any more, do we, Will, the Great War? Which may indicate some measure of maturity on the part of the American people since there’s no such thing as a great war, is there?

I didn’t enjoy the fact that he’d stooped to punning to make his point, which I found dubious to begin with. I was also beginning to feel very cold and wet, the Alabama rain coming in hard against my face, driven by a fierce northwest wind. Nor was I looking forward to one of the little lectures my father had been fond of delivering before I’d enlisted in the Air Force. I really though we’d settled that question once and for all on the day he said he’d sign. So I figured I’d put an end to any further discussion right then and there by simply stating that the Nazis were bad and that fighting them was therefore good, period.

Yes, my father said, but only three months ago the Italians were bad, and fighting them was good. It now appears they were only poor misguided victims of Mussolini, who couldn’t wait to get rid of him, ignoring for the time being a heritage of fascism that went all the way back to the Roman Empire. But then, Will, this is all about fascism, dictatorship, totalitarianism, and enslavement versus liberty, justice, freedom, and Abraham Lincoln’s mother’s dog, isn’t it?

I was about to tell him I didn’t particularly appreciate the note of sarcasm in his voice because I happened to believe that’s exactly what this war was about, and I was willing to defend with my life if necessary the very principles he seemed to be mocking. But he wasn’t expecting an answer, and he wasn’t waiting for one. He brought his hand up sharply to clamp the Homburg tighter onto his head as a fresh gust of wind threatened to send it skimming across the railroad tracks to where the Negro troops were billeted. We’re saving the world for democracy all over again, he said, speaking louder than the wind and with the same angry sarcasm, his head turned toward mine, his face wet, his blue eyes demanding attention. We’re assuming, of course, that what the world wants or even needs is democracy, he said, and we’re assuming that our great American experiment — which is now only in its hundred and sixty-eighth year — will succeed one day, will come to full maturity one day. I wonder just when that’s going to be, though, don’t you? We came through our puberty when we fought the Civil War, Will, and we might have made it safely into manhood if only the world hadn’t involved us in another war so soon afterward. But the very young are always expected to solve the problems of the world, and God knows we were the youngest nation around just then. Europe had thrown some sixty-five million men into the meat grinder and solved nothing at all, so I guess it seemed only proper for us to throw in another four million and set everything right. Well, who knows? Maybe Europe’s getting too old and too wise to ever fight another war after this one. Then again, I thought she was too old even after the last one — which didn’t turn out to he the last one at all, did it, but merely the first one.

I wish you’d stop making puns, I said.

And now we’ve got the second one, my father said, and after we win it — oh yes, I’m fairly certain we’ll win it, we’re a strong and determined nation — after we win it, I’m not too sure we won’t make the same errors all over again, the errors we made last time, the ones that led inevitably to what we’ve got now. The sad part, Will, is that we’ve never really been permitted to grow out of our adolescence. You could write the history of our country through the eyes of a teen-ager because that’s exactly what America’s been for as long as I can remember — an impulsive, emotional, inexperienced adolescent, who, I’m beginning to suspect more and more, enjoys action, enjoys violence, enjoys, yes, murder. It’s murder, son, don’t look so outraged. I don’t care if you’ve got a Nazi boy pulling that trigger, or a Jap, or a sweet apple-cheeked lad from New Hampshire, it’s murder, it’s killing another human being without anger and in cold blood, it’s the worst kind of murder.

My face, wet and raw from the rain and the wind, was burning now with anger besides. If he was trying to prove to me that the adolescent was a murderous animal, he had certainly succeeded because I was ready to strangle him now, father or no. I mean, what the hell, I was working my ass off training to be a pilot so that I could go over there to help end this damn thing, and he was telling me, in effect, that I was being trained to commit murder. That was a good way to build somebody’s morale, all right, especially your own son’s, especially when he was in Basic and was hoping to get his wings come next May and be in Europe or the Pacific by July. That was a nice way to send your son off, by telling him he was a murderer for wanting to kill the people who were trying to enslave the goddamn world. Look, I said, nobody wants to fight a goddamn war, but sometimes you have to defend yourself, can’t you understand that?

Yes, he said, I can understand that. We all had to defend ourselves last time, too. France had to defend herself because she’d lost Alsace-Lorraine when the Germans beat Napoleon III. England had to defend herself because Germany was becoming a very big maritime power, and was grabbing off too much of the world’s commerce. Germany had to defend herself because tariff barriers were going up against her everywhere she turned. Russia had to defend herself because getting the Balkans would have satisfied her historic itch for an outlet on the Mediterranean. Even America, an ocean’s width away, had to defend herself because of her own expanding importance; if we had let the most powerful nation in Europe win the war, we’d have lost too much of the world’s trade, and our prestige as a rising power would have plummeted. We all had a lot to defend, Will. It just wasn’t what they told us we were defending, that’s all. And now we’re justifying yet another war — the Japanese attacked us, so of course we have to defend ourselves — striking our familiar adolescent pose and pretending we’re motivated only by high ideals and lofty principles.